On DVD, Soap still bubbles with subversiveness

June 11, 2008|By SARAH RODMAN The Boston Globe

Watching Soap: The Complete Series (Columbia Tri-Star Home Entertainment, $59.95) in the year 2008 is startling for two reasons. First, the ABC sitcom, which ran for four seasons from 1977-1981, is still laugh-out-loud funny. The fashions of the upper-crust Tate and blue-collar Campbell families at the heart of this spoof of daytime dramas may be woefully dated, but the guffaws have not gone out of style. Whether it's vituperative ventriloquist's dummy Bob (via puppeteer Jay Johnson's Chuck) spewing one-liners like so much sarcastic sawdust, or Richard Mulligan's masterful mugging and slapstick, creator and head writer Susan Harris knew how to mine humor from familial dysfunction.

The second surprise is what the producers were able to get past the broadcast standards department.

In the first season alone, the main cast included Billy Crystal's Jody Dallas, a comfortably out gay man, aggrieved black butler Benson - so expertly played by Robert Guillaume he got his own spinoff - and a story line involving a mother and daughter sleeping with the same man. (It was Robert Urich, we understand.) With language that was racy for the time, Soap skewered sexual, class, and racial stereotypes with acid-tipped swords.

As the creators admit in this frills-free set's lone extra, the reason the outlandish story lines that were often used on the show - alien abduction, amnesia, demonic possession - actually worked was that the actors made you care about the characters. The mostly theater-trained cast could turn on a banana peel from silly to grave with exceptional grace.

Another element of joy in watching any vintage series is spotting future familiar faces. Soap had many, including Gordon Jump (WKRP in Cincinnati), Doris Roberts (Everybody Loves Raymond) and Joe Mantegna, who played Central American revolutionary "Juan One."

While there are references and plot points that fall flat now, the basic premise is universal: Family can drive you crazy, but laughing together may be the only way to stay sane.